Musings on The 4th of July
by Linette Hwu
I’ve been thinking about holidays.
Last month Juneteenth National Independence Day became a federal holiday in what seemed like record time. I saw the news that the Senate had unanimously passed its bill, and within two days the House had also passed the bill (not quite as unanimously) and President Biden had signed it into law.
For me it was a pleasant surprise in at least two ways. After the nationwide (worldwide, really) protests that followed George Floyd’s murder in late May 2020 and the almost predictable backlash in reaction, which included an increase in voter suppression tactics around the 2020 election and has now developed into overheated and inaccurate rhetoric against “critical race theory” (not to mention the proposal of at least 250 new laws in 43 states that would restrict ballot access), I wasn’t expecting such an emphatic demonstration of near-consensus on anything relating to race. Plus, who knew that anything could be done that quickly in Washington?
Of course, I soon came down from the momentary high. A new federal holiday commemorating the end of slavery in Texas in June 1865 (two-and-a-half years after the Emancipation Proclamation) doesn’t do anything to end systemic racism—to address police brutality, or housing inequality, or food deserts, or environmental injustice, or failing schools, or (again) the need for voting rights protection—to give every American a fair chance at “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
So now it is the 4th of July. I don’t have any childhood memories of the 4th of July. I am a child of immigrants, so I think it didn’t feel like our holiday. We just didn’t do it.
The summer I was 23 was the first 4th of July I remember. I was living in a group house in Arlington, VA, and my housemates and I spent the day socializing—in that uniquely young adult way that sometimes seems to threaten Dunbar’s number, with several layers of our social networks (boyfriends, college friends, law school friends, friends’ coworkers, etc.)—before biking en masse to the National Mall for John Philip Sousa and fireworks and then biking home. I recall thinking I’d happily do July 4th like that every year.
But in the last 15 years, I have been out of the country on July 4th as often as I have watched fireworks. In the same sense that chants of “U.S.A.! U.S.A.!” make me vaguely uncomfortable, in a circling-the-wagons kind of way (who is in the circle and who is not?), I guess I have never quite gotten over that childhood feeling that I don’t really belong at July 4th celebrations. Instead, I took advantage of the day off to travel.
It strikes me that a number of our federal holidays have taken on that same quality of primarily being the reason to plan a trip, grill all day, buy stuff on sale. How do we actually honor George Washington and Abraham Lincoln in February? Especially these days—with union membership at historic lows and union organizing struggling against both the Amazons of the world and the U.S. Supreme Court—what could it look like to actually recognize the contributions of the American labor movement?
Is Juneteenth destined to meet the same fate? Surely not for Black Americans. One of the objections raised by several of the House Republicans who voted against the Juneteenth bill was to the official name of the holiday, in that we already have an Independence Day. Apparently they are not familiar with Frederick Douglass’s “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” speech.
I also think that to the extent the debate (if that’s the right word) about critical race theory represents yet another battle over the stories we tell about ourselves and our country, our history and our present, designating Juneteenth a federal holiday is important for purposes of shaping the narrative as we chart a course for the future we are daily working to imagine and then bring into reality, for the more perfect union we are ever trying to create.
Why am I sharing these musings on the TSTC blog? Simply, because the practice of Yoga demands that we see the world as it is and then strive to make it better, that we contribute in some way to happiness and freedom for all beings. As I wrote in my last post, service is a key component of Yoga, and in my view, we do not serve either our students or our communities if all that Yoga is to them is following their bliss—what has come to be known as spiritual bypassing. Rather, I believe Yoga involves becoming both aware and self-aware, sitting with and meditating through whatever discomfort may arise in the process, considering the thoughts, words and actions that might start to lead to individual and social change and then following through.
As Susanna Barkataki wrote in Embrace Yoga’s Roots, “The yogic practice of ahimsa is not just the opposite of violence or about passively avoiding violence, but about actively and constructively having the power to make a change for the better.” Later in the book, she proclaims, “Satya is speaking truth to power.”
With that understanding of the first two yamas, which are the first of Patanjali’s eight limbs of Yoga, what better place would there be than within the Tranquil Space Teachers Collective to offer and invite reflection in community?
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When the TSTC social justice sangha met on June 6th, Mary Lyle Buff quoted Susanna as part of our discussion: “Yoga, at its heart, is a radical and civically engaged practice.”
We are deepening our exploration of Susanna’s book at our revolutionary sangha on Wednesday, July 14th (Bastille Day!) at 7 p.m. ET. Register here to join us, and stay tuned to our social media platforms for more info on our thematic focus this time around.
For now, Happy 4th of July 🇺🇸🎆